Baapya opens normally enough. A small Konkani village. A boisterous fisherman (Girish Kulkarni as Anya) is in debt. His teenage son (Aaryan Menghji as Sanju) is infatuated with a classmate. Anya’s lawyer proposes a land deal to fix the crisis. The catch: he needs the signature of his ex-wife, Shailaja (Rajshri Deshpande), who left the family years ago. His second wife and kids could do with the money. Both father and son do not look forward to seeing the woman who ‘deserted’ them, but they must. And at the half-hour mark of Baapya, they do. Except they don’t. Shailaja returns as a doctor, but also as a man. A gender reassignment surgery means that Shailaja is now Shailesh (Rajshri Deshpande), a trans man who was once a reluctant wife and mother. What follows is a bittersweet week in a community that grapples with the ‘stigma’ of this transition, even as Anya and his son resist their new reality on the conveyor belt to acceptance.
I read somewhere that a film or book should be created in the language of the people it explores. I don’t agree but, in theory, it makes sense. Otherwise, any subject becomes an artistic tool rather than a genre of communication. But in a country like India, this theory is exploited in the name of mass entertainment. It dumbs down the medium to a series of alphabets that refuses to challenge their audience or elevate their notions of film-making. It sells rather than tells. Baapya is somewhere in between — it employs a simplistic template to relay complex themes in a culture that may not process it if the packaging isn’t mainstream. Humour is often its weapon of choice. For instance, the entry of a moustached Shailesh is almost played for laughs; he offers Anya, the ex-husband, a lift in his car and Anya goes on chatting without recognising him. Too easy. Many of Anya’s exchanges with his second wife and mother-in-law are laced with comical sound cues. There’s a set piece that ends with him reaching his house after everyone thinks he’s dead. I’m not sure this treatment works; it’s at odds with the gravitational core, almost as if the story is shy of revealing itself without its disguise.
Even some of the dramatic moments seem to be reverse-engineered to highlight Shailesh’s identity and the conflict around it. You can tell that there will be a death of a family member at some point, because the male-dominated rituals can expose chauvinism in a new context; some elders will of course protest the inclusion of Shailesh in the lifting and lighting of the pyre. When in doubt, the film resorts to tropes like (long) drunken chats and abrupt accidents; there’s a little revelation towards the end about the son’s online friend that’s creepy and corny at once. The flashbacks of the couple as youngsters are flattened into broad strokes and emotions. Anya’s inability to grasp a tomboyish Shailaja’s gender dysmorphia is reframed as denial; his ignorance comes across as a rehearsed deafness, like he’s playing a role within a role. In other words, the ‘performance’ of it all is too visible, but that’s the nature of the beast. Girish Kulkarni’s acting ties into those caricaturish and high-pitched ways: Anya is either very dismissive, very nostalgic or very angry. There’s no middle ground in a narrative that’s situated in the middle ground of life itself.
The stageyness aside, Baapya treats its characters with the required ambiguity. I like that it humanises Anya, an inherently regressive man who behaves like an antagonist until he doesn’t. The transformation is too seamless (it involves alcohol naturally), but there’s a sense that Anya cannot be judged in binaries, despite saying and doing some terrible things. He struggles to forget the wife he once loved and let down, but struggles harder to fathom that his feelings for Shailesh remain platonic; he can’t get himself to be all buddy-like with Shailesh, no matter how much he tries. The sadness in him is palpable, largely because he feels guilty for having caged his ‘wife’ for years. There’s a powerful implication of him falling for the man — the person, not the gender — without questioning his own sexual orientation. I also like the character of his best friend and lawyer, played by Shrikant Yadav with the kind of dignity that one expects from the wise uncle in the family. He’s the only one who believed all along: her body, her choice.
Rajshri Deshpande has long been an intuitive actor whose work is informed by the social work she does. Even if the roles are self-serious, it always feels like she’s discovering different perspectives and ways of living through her creative choices. Her performance as Shailesh could’ve gone wrong on many levels, because it’s hard to unsee the ‘disguise’ once you know how Deshpande looks. But she commits to the role of a trans man and his uncertain gait, as if he were still coming to terms with how to use this new body and how to react to others who see this body. A memorable scene shows Shailesh being slapped in rage, but then striving not to respond as a woman who’s been abused. It’s a subtle touch: the mind was always there, but the physicality is still not entirely his own. It’s even more remarkable, given that we don’t see much of Shailaja in the past, so all the alterations emerge in real time; we have to just believe in the emotional stakes through Shailesh’s eyes. There’s never a sense that Deshpande is ‘pretending’ to be a man; it’s Shailesh trying to resemble a man. One is acting, the other is trying to stop acting. She somehow contains the tenderness of a mother who misses her son and the regret of a parent who was never meant to be one. It’s the kind of turn that deserves a more grown-up movie. Baapya is more important than it is good, but she’s both. If only the film were a little more like its protagonist: restrained, dignified, uncomfortable with attention, but transitioning into the truth.